Note 24 — The Spanish Friars, After 1898

The regulations affecting Chinese immigration are explained at p. 633. Other foreigners are permitted to enter the Philippines (conditionally), but all are required to pay an entrance fee (I had to pay $5.30 Mex.) before embarking (abroad) for a Philippine port, and make a declaration of 19 items,24 of which the following are the most interesting to the traveller:—(1) Sex; (2) whether married or single; (3) who paid the passage-money; (4) whether in possession of $30 upward or less; (5) whether ever in prison; (6) whether a polygamist. The master or an officer of the vessel carrying the passenger is required to make oath before the United States Consul at the port of embarkation that he has made a “personal examination” of his passenger, and does not believe him (or her) to be either an idiot, or insane person, or a pauper, or suffering from a loathsome disease, or an ex-convict, or guilty of infamous crime involving moral turpitude, or a polygamist, etc. The shipʼs doctor has to state on oath that he has also made a “personal examination” of the passenger. If the vessel safely arrives in port, say Manila, she will be boarded by a numerous staff of Customsʼ officials. In the meantime the passenger will have been supplied with declaration-forms and a printed notice, stating that an “Act provides a fine of not exceeding $2,000 or imprisonment at hard labour, for not more than five years, or both, for offering a gratuity to an officer of the Customs in consideration of any illegal act in connexion with the examination of baggage.” The baggage-declaration must be ready for the officers, and, at intervals during an hour and a half, he (or she) has to sign six different declarations as to whether he (or she) brings fire-arms. The baggage is then taken to the Custom-house in a steam-launch for examination, which is not unduly rigid. Under a Philippine Commission Act, dated October 15, 1901, the Collector of Customs, or his deputy, may, at his will, also require the passenger to take an oath of allegiance in such terms that, in the event of war between the passengerʼs country and America, he who takes the oath would necessarily have to forfeit his claim for protection from his own country, unless he violated that oath. No foreigner is permitted to land if he comes “under a contract expressed, or implied, to perform labour in the Philippine Islands.” In 1903 this prohibition to foreigners was disputed by a British bank-clerk who arrived in Manila for a foreign bank. The case was carried to court, with the result that the prohibition was maintained in principle, although the foreigner in question was permitted to remain in the Islands as an act of grace. But in February, 1905, a singular case occurred, exactly the reverse of the one just mentioned. A young Englishman who had been brought out to Manila on a four yearsʼ agreement, after four or five months of irregular conduct towards the firm employing him, presented himself to the Collector of Customs (as Immigration Agent), informed against himself, and begged to be deported from the Colony. The incentive for this strange proceeding was to secure the informerʼs reward of $1,000. It was probably the first case in Philippine history of a person voluntarily seeking compulsory expulsion from the Islands. The Government, acting on the information, shipped him off to Hong-Kong, the nearest British port, in the following month, with a through passage to Europe.